


we are as forbidden as prayer

by TheQueenWillRuleTheBoard



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 07:27:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13429821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueenWillRuleTheBoard/pseuds/TheQueenWillRuleTheBoard
Summary: Every second of every day, she has to bite her tongue and avert her eyes and keep to herself, pretending she is anywhere near beautiful. Kagome rescued her, and Inuyasha forgave her, and she fell apart into a blubbering mess. She became sweet, grieving Sango. That’s who they forgave, but that girl has long since expired. All that remains anymore is the anger.





	we are as forbidden as prayer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rizahawkaye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rizahawkaye/gifts).



> I wrote this for Katie for the Inuyasha Fandom Secret Santa 2018 Gift Exchange. I hope you like it! Enjoy. :)

**i. _beautiful_**

The only thing that keeps Sango from believing she is a walking corpse is the anger. It crackles in the pit of her stomach, like a fire in a hearth, and it’s all she can do to pull herself together and cage it within her bones.

She cannot be angry at Kagome, who is bright and kind. Kagome, who forgives so easily. Too easily. Standing next to her, Sango imagines herself the antithesis of the girl – comprised of shadows, crafted of sorrows. Sango stands beside her, fists silently clenched, jaw wired shut. She will not forgive, not ever. She is too empty.

It is too easy to be angry at Inuyasha, such that he makes being inflammatory his mission, but it holds no interest for Sango. She’s never preyed on an easy target: without any risk, there is no pleasure, and arguing with Inuyasha doesn’t incite any danger. His attitude is a defense mechanism – a shell – and she can sense his gruff remarks are more habitual than heartfelt.

But _him._ The monk. He always catches her when her guard slips, when she glares at the ground hoping it will snap its jaw around her and take her life, and he gives her a slight smile as if to say _me too._ He’s the sweetest of their group, the gentlest, and it sizzles in her joints when she looks at him. Every second of every day, she has to bite her tongue and avert her eyes and keep to herself, pretending she is anywhere near beautiful. Kagome rescued her, and Inuyasha forgave her, and she fell apart into a blubbering mess. She became sweet, grieving Sango. That’s who they forgave, but that girl has long since expired. All that remains anymore is the anger.

But every time she looks at that man, that effortlessly beautiful man, she can’t contain herself. She’s heard his stories, heard the implications behind the melancholy phrases that fall from his lips even when everyone is paying attention. _It isn’t fair,_ she thinks. _How can he be murkier on the inside, more hollow than me, and still find this all so easy?_

Images flash through her mind of all the small things she knows he does just for her: the way he meets her eyes and gives her a peek of a smile when he pours her tea, the way his fingers will brush against hers as he walks past her, or the way he just watches her far more closely than anyone else. He infuriates her, and the more she thinks about it, the more it aches. The second their eyes meet, she wants to rip him to pieces. Every single time.

She wakes up from a nightmare, and crawls as quietly as she can to find refuge in the trees. When she gets far away enough from the campsite to take a ragged breath and choke on a sob, she collapses on her front and curls in on herself. The cool dirt pressing against her face is a comfort. It’s calling to her: _Come back, Sango. You are supposed to be dead. You were supposed to stay with me._ She can’t help but to agree with it.

Footsteps follow gently behind her, and she knows without a doubt who is kneeling behind her.

“Sango…” he whispers. Not a question, but a statement of fact. He doesn’t need to know what’s wrong; he already knows it’s inevitable that something is.

“What are you doing here,” she says flatly, bits of earth finding their way into her mouth.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he says. “And I thought I should come see you.”

She sits up now, glaring at him. “You shouldn’t have.”

He sighs and nods. “Perhaps.”

“I hate you,” she says, voice trembling.

“I know,” he whispers. “Me too.”

She curls her hands tightly around the earth and unbidden, the tears start again. “I wish I were dead,” she confesses, a whisper carried by the breeze.

He takes her hand in his, the rosary beads pressed into her palm, and he wraps his other arm around her, clutching her tightly to him. “Me too,” he says again, lips pressed to her hair. She is covered in dirt and tears and sweat but he doesn’t care and neither does she. For the moment, they are two corpses wound around each other, and Sango feels for the first time in her life that she is beautiful. She is beautiful, just like him. “Me too,” he whispers over and over again, into her mouth, like prayer.

**ii. _promised_**

She doesn’t know where the anger stops and the reverence begins, really. It’s their own special game, one half combat and one half promenade, and she delights in it: it simultaneously keeps her dead and alive.

They’ve lost count of how many times she asked him to kill her, asked him to reach for her in the final, most peril moments of his life.

She loves the curse in his hand, loves the way he was born knowing that death walked toe to toe behind him, loves the way it kept him searching for someone who empathized with the feeling, who had a reaper over their shoulder too. Whenever they’re alone, rare moments of stealing away to far corners of villages or wandering to streams in the woods under moonlight, she tugs his hand away from him and presses it to her chest. The feel of the void nestled up against her heart amplifies the sound, and she never feels more connected to him, more alive.

The first time she’d done it, he yelped and snatched his hand away, whispering an incredulous, “What are you _doing,_ Sango?”

“I’m not afraid,” she said, pulling it back toward her, easing his palm open over her breast.

“You should be.” Not a warning, just the truth.

“I know.” She smiled at him, big and wide. “But I want it to take me, too. When it pulls you in with it, I want to go too.”

“Sango…”

“Do you love me?” she whispered, holding his eyes steady in hers.

“I –” he gaped for a second, his face contorting into anger. “Angry” was her favorite incarnation of him, and she loved to draw it out. His mouth settled into a hard line and he admitted, “Of course. Always, more than anything.”

“Then don’t leave me alone. Take me with you,” she said.

“We’ll see,” he’d said.

“We’ll see,” he always says.

But she knows he spent his whole life searching for her, for someone who matches him, and she knows that he is selfish by nature. He loves her too much to kill her, but he’ll always love her too much to let her go.

She loves the curse in his hand, and loves the way the beads that contain it wrap around both of their throats.

 _You promise we’ll always be together?_ she asks them.

 _Always,_ they answer. _Always, always, always._

**iii. _irresolvable_**

They didn’t die that day, when they ought to have. He hung up the beads and she hung up her blade and they settled into a life together. More often than not, she feels empty and calm, not angry. She doesn’t burn anymore, and the urge to bury herself in the earth subsides.

She wishes it felt like relief.

It doesn’t.

Their children grow too fast, and over hurried breakfasts and bath time, she meets his eyes. He gives her a slight smile as if to say, _me too._ She never thought that they’d make good parents, or that they’d get to be parents, or that they’d even elect to stay alive.

But he pulls their girls into their clothes and she hoists their boy onto her back, and when he kisses her, his breath is warm and his stubble is ticklish. She grins back at him, laughing a little as their daughters exclaim in protest: “Ewww!”

It only surfaces at night, when she lays with him beneath the moonlight. She remembers a night, decades ago it seems, that he pulled her out of the dirt and cried with her under the moon. “I love you,” she says. It’s the only part of her that feels the same as it used to, the only part of her that feels real anymore.

“I love you too,” he whispers, pressing his lips to her temple.

She wraps her arms tightly around him and nestles her face into the crook of his neck. “Do you remember that night? I never thought I’d survive. I never thought I could be happy.”

“I remember.”

She swallows, “Is this what happiness is? Is this … the end?”

He hesitates, stroking her hair as he contemplates his reply. “I … don’t know. Is there ever an end?”

She looks up at him, eyes brimming with a new wave of tears. “Miroku, I’m scared.”

“Me too,” he says, lips pressed to her hair. The desperation returns, the need to remember what they had done so beautifully together burning once again in her chest. “Me too,” he whispers over and over again, into her mouth, like a prayer.


End file.
